The campaign for the release for a full version of Emu42s is still under way at hp42s.com. The campaign is over 2/3 of the way there. Only 200 EUR more to make the release a reality. Let's see if we can make it happen by HHC2004 meeting.

I've been out on vacation for the last 30 days or so
and I wasn't aware of this campaign, so perhaps I'm
missing some information already given, but I've got a couple of questions: supposing the funds are raised and the emulator
is released:

Does this mean that the ROM image(s) will be available too to HP42S owners ? The emulator is useless without the ROM, and not every 42S owner out there also owns a 48/49, in fact I would think that rather the opposite would be true, i.e.: 42S owners (lovers, you might say) are unlikely to have bought or keep a 48/49 as well. How can those interested users get the ROM ? Would anyone provide it to them after some 'proof-of-ownership' was supplied ?

Does this mean that the emulator's author will be amenable to give some kind of support to users, and release updates and maintenance versions from time to time, or else the funds cover just the release of the sources and that's all there's to it ?

Valentin Albillo wrote:
> Does this mean that the ROM image(s) will be available too to HP42S owners ?

If you look at the What is Emu42 info, you'll find that the ROMs are not distributed with Emu42. This is for copyright reasons, but once the software is out, you will see images floating around (as has happened with the other emulators).

> Does this mean that the emulator's author will be amenable to give some kind of support to users ...

I think the idea is to make the software open source, so that anybody can take it and adapt it for their own use.
I think this is implied in the GPL licence: once the code is distributed, it (and the source) becomes common property.

Is the use of your own ROM images in emulators legally? A hard question that can only be answered a lawyer. But in the times of Emu48 before the ROM images were published, employees of HP stated in postings that HP have had no problems with the use of ROM images created from own calculators. But this will imply also, when you sell the calculator you have to destroy all copies (ROM images) of this ROM.

> Does this mean that the emulator's author will be amenable to give some kind of support to users,

There's no personal support! I will not answer any support questions by email. Answering questions in newsgroups (or usenet) have the advantage that the answer might be interesting for others, the support can be made be several people who had the same problem and finally stupid questions can be ignored.

I personally have no problems with mails pointing to a bug or misbehavior of the software, but I also don't like something like this "Could you add this and this and perhaps this?" I more prefer something like this: "Hey, I made my own copy of ... and added the following feature yyy. This might be useful for others. What do you think about integrating it into your version?"

> and release updates and maintenance versions from time to time, or else the funds cover just the release of the sources and that's all there's to it ?

Updates will be done in the same manner like with Emu28 or Emu48. It's on Open Source project, updates can be made by everyone, but of course I will fix bugs and update the software from time to time.